Platform users will now be able to drill down to view snapshot and historical HECM data, and they’ll be able to benchmark the data against their own portfolio and leverage it to develop enhanced credit models, the company said.

RiskSpan has been collating data on the reverse mortgage market’s potential in partnership with National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association since 2000, generating the quarterly Reverse Mortgage Market Index.

Most recently, the index revealed that home equity for homeowners 62 and older grew to $6.82 trillion in Q1 2018.

Bernadette Kogler, RiskSpan’s founder and CEO, said it is this growth and the company’s interest in monitoring the impact of changes to the HECM program made by the Federal Housing Administration that spurred RiskSpan’s decision to delve further into the space.

“Changing demographics coupled with low retirement savings for the same population support reverse mortgage programs. We have also seen an increased interest from both investors (asset managers) as well as originators who appear to be positioning themselves for launching private programs,” Kogler said, noting that the uptick in private products is likely a reaction to FHA program changes.

Kogler said RiskSpan seeks to monitor the mortgage market and associated risks.

“With the exit of the large banks several years back, there is a concentration of counter-party risk with non-depository institutions who have varying degrees of financial strength," Kogler continued. "We know that FHA has made several program changes to mitigate risk and we plan to study the impact, if any, on delinquencies and defaults from FHA program changes.”

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Jessica Guerin is an editor at HousingWire covering reverse mortgages and the housing wealth space. She is a graduate of Boston University and has a master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. She worked previously as the editor-in-chief of The Reverse Review magazine, which was recently acquired by HousingWire.

Commentary

With the recent turnover in leadership at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, we may be standing at the precipice of great change in the government’s role in supporting the mortgage market through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.